The Amazon synod: A breakdown

The outcomes of the October summit could have a huge impact on indigenous communities, writes Colm Fitzptrick

It’s been a synod tinged with controversy over priestly celibacy and female leadership in the Church; amidst all of this, eyes were also focused on two statues stolen from a church near the Vatican and subsequently thrown in a river. Synods can sometimes be boring and drawn-out, but this one managed to capture the attention of the global media – so what was it and what were the outcomes?

Over the last few weeks, from October 6-27, a special assembly of the Synod of Bishops has been taking place on the theme of ‘Amazonia, new paths for the Church and for an integral ecology’. Its purpose was to discuss the challenges that people in the Amazon region are facing today and how the Church should respond to these issues. Although the synod was focused on one small geographical area, the topics involved are of grave impact to the universal Church.

Evangelisation

As a ‘special assembly’ rather than an ‘ordinary general assembly’ of the Synod of Bishops, the members of the synod for the Amazon are mainly the bishops of the Amazon region of nine South American countries, and the discussions will focus on evangelisation and safeguarding creation in that region, Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops said at the opening session on October 7.

But, “while regarding a specific geographic area, it is still a synod that interests the universal Church”, Cardinal Baldisseri said, so the heads of Vatican offices and representative bishops from around the world also are voting members.

During the synod, discussions revolved around topics presented in the synod working document (in Latin, the Instrumentum laboris) which was published in June after consultation with bishops in the region, the offices of the Roman Curia, religious orders, Catholic faithful in the Amazon and representatives of the indigenous communities there.

The document, however, did not sit peacefully with some – its references to indigenous spirituality, the possible ordination of married elders to respond to a serious shortage of priests and to climate change and the devastation of the forests fuelled by greed – led to serious criticism even among some cardinals. Critics said the document appeared to promote pantheism and an end to mandatory celibacy for most priests in the Latin-rite church.

Most of the deforestation in Brazil is for cattle ranching to export beef”

For example, in June, German Cardinal Walter Brandmuller published an essay in which he accused the synod’s working document of being heretical because it referred to the rainforest as a place of divine revelation.

Controversy about idolatry was also prominent, specifically in the form of statues of a kneeling pregnant woman representing life, fertility and mother earth. Referred to as Pachamama, the statue was present on October 4 when Pope Francis planted a tree in the Vatican Gardens and entrusted the synod to St Francis of Assisi. Copies of the statue were subsequently stolen by two men from the Church of St Mary in Traspontina and tossed into the River Tiber because there were said to have represented paganism. The statues were swiftly recovered by Italian police.

While these protesting voices were heard, they were mostly muffled out by the sounds of Church leaders and members trying to find solutions to the problems present in the Amazon region. A few days before it began, Cardinal Hummes, relator general of the synod said: “This is just a working document that will be given to the synod fathers. And that will be the basis to begin the work and build the final document from zero. It’s also known as a ‘martyred document’,” adding that it stemmed from the Church’s desire to listen to the local Church in the Amazon.

“The Church didn’t do it for the sake of doing it to only ignore them,” the Brazilian cardinal said. “No! If it was done, it was so that (the Church) could to listen to them. This is the synodal path: to seriously listen.” And that’s exactly what the Church did.

Although topics at the summit involved down-to-earth problems like funding difficulties for Amazonian dioceses and parishes, the three major issues tackled were: environmental destruction, priestly celibacy and women leadership.

Environmental destruction

The Amazon is renowned for its natural and cultural diversity, covering countries like Brazil, Colombia and Peru. It houses the world’s largest tropical rainforest which is central for the sustenance of all life that grows and resides there. However, the entire region has been racked by extreme deforestation and pollution.

In their four-minute presentations during the first two weeks of the synod, participants described how mines, dams and other enterprises owned, built or operated by companies in industrialised countries displace local communities, affecting the environment and disrupting people’s lives.

Global trade also has a serious impact. For example, most of the deforestation in Brazil is for cattle ranching to export beef. Destruction and fires in Bolivia’s lowland dry forest increased after the country signed an agreement that is expected double beef exports to China.

And demand for gold keeps prices high, encouraging illegal miners to invade indigenous people’s territories in remote parts of the Amazon. Their unregulated operations leave the whole area barren and rivers laced with poisonous chemicals.

In response to these crises, the Church said in their final document released on October 26 that the Amazon calls for “a deep personal, social and structural conversion that leads to new ways of caring for our common home”.

“God has given us the earth as a gift and as a task, to care for it and to answer for it; we do not own it,” the synod members wrote.

Caring for the earth requires an integral ecology that connects “the exercise of care for nature with the exercise of justice for the most impoverished and disadvantaged on earth,” they wrote.

Integral ecology, they said, is not just one path open, “it is the only path, because there is no other viable route for saving the region”.

Francis did say he was open to studying the possibility of ordaining married men of proven virtue – viri probati – for very remote locations”

The document calls for energy policies that drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which cause global warming, and promote clean energy alternatives that contribute to better health.

“The future of the Amazon is in the hands of us all, but it depends mainly on our immediately abandoning the current model that is destroying the forest, not bringing well-being and endangering this immense natural treasure and its guardians.”

Indigenous people who were observers at the synod asked the Church to back them in their demand for legal recognition of their territories, to protect against incursions by illegal loggers and miners or the concession of their lands to development projects or extractive industries. The synod document specifically mentioned the importance of defending territories inhabited by semi-nomadic people who shun contact with outsiders.

The bishops also recognised that in the Amazon ‘the majority of Catholic communities are led by women’”

People who publicly defend their territorial rights are often criminally prosecuted, harassed or targeted for assassination, indigenous synod participants said. In the document, the synod members said the Church must support them against persecution.

As a follow-up to the synod, the members proposed creation of a pastoral office that would work with Church institutions, other organisations and representatives of indigenous peoples to track socio-environmental conflicts and help the Church “take a position, make decisions and defend the rights of the most vulnerable”.

“The Church has been and is at the side of the indigenous communities,” they wrote, “to safeguard the right to have their own tranquil life, respecting the values of their traditions, customs and cultures, the preservation of rivers and forests which are sacred spaces, sources of life and wisdom.”

Priestly celibacy

The synod’s 45-page working document, published by the Vatican June 17, suggested studying “the possibility of priestly ordination for elders – preferably indigenous, respected and accepted by the community – even if they have an established and stable family”.

While Pope Francis made it clear that he did not agree with allowing “optional celibacy” for priests, he did say he was open to studying the possibility of ordaining married men of proven virtue – viri probati – for very remote locations, such as the Amazon and the Pacific islands, where Catholic communities seldom have Mass because there are no priests.

One of those remote locations is the Kichwa indigenous community of Sarayaku, located in the of the Ecuadorian Amazon region accessible only by plane or a canoe-ride. A priest or bishop comes by every two weeks or sometimes just once a month.

During the general sessions, some presentations focused on this question as one possible way to help Catholics access the Sacraments in very remote locations.

Brazilian retired Bishop Erwin Krautler spoke to journalists saying that when it comes to ordaining married men of proven virtue, “there is no other option”.

“The indigenous people don’t understand celibacy; they say that very openly and I see it,” the bishop said. “When I go to an indigenous village, the first thing they ask is, ‘Where is your wife?’ And I tell them, ‘I don’t have one.’ Then they look at me with pity.”

Bishop Krautler added that there are thousands of indigenous communities in the Amazon that “do not celebrate the Eucharist except perhaps one, two or three times a year”.

“The Eucharist, for us Catholics, is the source and summit of our faith. And these poor people are practically excluded from the context of the Catholic Church,” he said.

In response to these concerns, the final document calls for the ordination of married men as priests. “Many of the ecclesial communities of the Amazonian territory have enormous difficulties in accessing the Eucharist,” the document says, while noting that some communities go for months, even years between visits from a priest.

The synod fathers said that they “appreciate celibacy as a gift of God to the extent that this gift enables the missionary disciple, ordained to the priesthood, to dedicate himself fully to the service of the Holy People of God”. But, the bishops concluded, “legitimate diversity does not harm the communion and unity of the Church, but expresses and serves it”.

The document proposes “to establish criteria and dispositions on the part of the competent authority…to ordain as priest suitable and esteemed men of the community, who have had a fruitful permanent diaconate and receive an adequate formation for the priesthood, having a legitimately constituted and stable family, to sustain the life of the Christian community.” The article passed by a margin of 128-41.

Women leadership

Women play a vital role in the leadership of the Amazonian Church because there are so few priests and bishops in the region to minister to isolated communities. A religious sister from Colombia said that her and other women’s congregations are important to the running of the Church there and these opinions were voiced in the pre-synodal process and in giving feedback for the creation of the working document.

“The presence of women in the Amazon is very great and very fertile. I do think we are very important as women, as far as our presence in the Amazonian forest,” Sr Alba Teresa Cediel Castillo of the Missionary Sisters of Mary Immaculate and St Catherine of Siena told journalists

It’s going to be hard for the Pope to broach universal agreement across the Church”

She said that because there are so few priests and bishops in the Amazon, they have to spend a lot of time moving around from place to place to minister to the different communities, but women religious are able to be a more stable presence, contributing to things such as education, healthcare, and development projects.

Sr Cediel also mentioned overseeing marriages. According to Latin rite canon law, a couple may validly and licitly exchange consent before other witnesses when there is no possibility, and will not be for a very long time, of exchanging consent before a priest or deacon.

Listening to these concerns, in their final document the synod calls for new and enhanced ministerial roles for women in the life of the Church in the region “by strengthening their participation in pastoral councils of parishes and dioceses, or even in instances of government”.

The bishops also recognised that in the Amazon “the majority of Catholic communities are led by women”, and asked “for the institution of a ministry for ‘women’s leadership of the community’ to be created and recognised within the service of the changing demands of evangelization and community care”.

The bishops noted that “in a large number of these consultations, the permanent diaconate for women was requested”.

“For this reason the theme was important during the synod,” the bishops wrote, but noted that Pope Francis had already created a commission to examine the question and so requested that they be given the chance to feed into that process.

In his speech to the closing session of the synod on Saturday, Pope Francis said that he would consider reconstituting the commission, which he established in 2016 under the auspices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to examine the historical role of female deacons and expand the commission to include new members.

Pope Francis also said the synod’s discussion on women “falls short” of explaining who women are in the Church, particularly “in the transmission of faith, in the preservation of culture. I would just like to underline this: that we have not yet realized what women mean in the Church”, but instead “we focus on the functional aspect, which is important”, but is not everything.

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The conclusions of the synod are not the final word on the matters raised. The document is advisory in nature only and text is ultimately entrusted for the Pope to discern and act upon.

The Church has made its voice clear on the matters but with plenty of dissenting votes on a number of issues, it’s going to be hard for Francis to broach universal agreement across the Church. While those affected eagerly await to hear any news, Francis needs time to chew over what he’s heard and learned, telling synod  participants that he hopes to publish a post-synodal exhortation “before the end of the year so that not too much time has passed”.

“A word from the Pope about what he has lived in the synod may do some good,” Francis said. “It all depends on how much time I have to think.”